picked up a box yesterday at one of my LCS.. guy wanted $90.. OUCH!! he threw in a bunch of onetouch holders & plastic boxes I needed, so I thought it was a deal, since he sales them for $1-1.50 each.. thought it made up the difference.. he originally told me $70-75, but he overpaid himself... hate middleman when it comes to buying boxes.. oh well.. haven't bought any boxes from that card shop in awhile..

guy only had two boxes... not many basketball collectors in San Diego.. at least in South Bay (chula vista)... a retired Sailor was looking at both of them.. but the shop owner was waiting for me to come pick out the first one..

got nobody worth mentioning.. lots of doubles.. lots of Kobe base.. I think I pulled 4 different versions.. no wonder Hoops has a huge checklist... just about every star player has multiple cards.. I pulled two kobes wearing his purple jersey, other was yellow.. then two all-star jersey's, which I liked better. reminds me of when UD used to throw in all the subsets of the all-star games.. I miss those early UD days..

The other guy only bought half the box.. pulled one auto, not worth mentioning, except his player was worse than my two autos.. he pulled a lot out kobes too..

We both pulled Jermey Lin base.. going to try to get rid of it while I can... one o the guys at the ship said they are selling pretty good. haven't looked yet, but more likely check SV, then let it go..

I thought Hoops was going to be a low end product... thought I read somewhere, that suggested retail was a $1.00 /pack... hard to imagine, when I've seen two LCS, selling $3.50-4.00/pack.

After reviewing the complete HOOPS checklist & seeing they only have, what.. 4 or 5, buyback autos.. I am going to pass up HOOPS.. just pick up a few autos online... I was debating if I should buy a case since it is low-end & I used to love Hoops.. Mainly wanted the buyback autos... but David Robinson being the best auto... forget it.. there is going to be so many Kobe autos in hoops... it's not even funny... probably pick them up for a price of a box now... I've seen Elite Black Box kobes go for under a $100. I picked mine up for a few dollars over.. glad I didn't have to pay what some people did... over twice that much..

Oh, I did get two Artist Proof's out of my box.. other guy pulled one out of 1/2 the box... I was thinking about buying the other half the box or pick up a few packs to pull the other auto out of the 2nd box.. but decided against it.. didn't like the odds of pulling a star auto...

I will wait to see other collector's breaks before debating on buying another box of Hoops...

POSITIVES: I do like the clean design of hoops & lots of action photos.. didn't like that they cut off some of the players heads that the player on the card was playing against.. would of been better to see both players facial expressions on the card...

DISLIKES: STICKER AUTOS... hopefully, the buybacks autos are not stickers...
** PRIVATE SIGNINGS - didn't Panini already have this done in other products?? I hate when companies use the same insert/auto set name across different products... each product should have their own set names....

I opened two boxes (I thought the 2nd couldn't be as bad as the 1st - I was wrong). Lot of base, 4 autos, 4 Artist's Proofs and many subsets/insert. This is supposed to be a low end item but the hobby shops are getting squeezed so the product is in the $85-90 range now. I don't like Panini's decision on no rookie cards this year. That more than anything else will keep my basketball buying to a minimum.